The dirty politics saga has taken a fresh twist with the offices of a National Party politician burgled.

Rodney MP Mark Mitchell had a laptop and phones stolen in the burglaries — and his email hacked.

You don’t break into an MPs office for money, alcohol or drugs. You break in for information. They stole a laptop.

Political commentator Chris Trotter said MPs having their property stolen was “not something that we’re used to in New Zealand politics”.

“It’s something we tend to associate with incidents like the Watergate break-in and that scandal.

“No one would condone the organised theft of political information, it puts the whole system at risk.”

So an MPs office has been broken into. I know of a Cabinet Minister’s partner whose office was targeted. Slater’s e-mail and Facebooked hacked. My office has a spy in it. I don’t know if these things are related, but it is natural to be suspicious. Others on the right have reported hacking attempts, where they have seen files being copied from their computer. We do have political espionage in New Zealand. What we don’t know is if it is a series of individuals with no connection with each other, or co-ordinated.

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“No one would condone the organised theft of political information, it puts the whole system at risk.”

Not so sure about that.

The left particularly and the media in general have turned the likes of traitor Snowden and that creepy Australian holed up in a London embassy along with that treachrous soldier into latter day Ned Kellys ……but then Ned was a criminal too.

I seem to recall that the break in at Cunliffe’s office took a hard drive that had correspondence from Domghua Liu. National subsequently did a ‘gotcha’ on that matter. But I genuinely think that was a coincidence.

Congrats Hager, you’ve pushed the red button and NZ politics has gone nuclear. The odds of any policy or matters of substance getting media time between now and polling day are close to zero. It’s going to be nothing but dirt, claims, and counter-claims.

Rather a hysterical post from DPF. Stealing phones and a laptop could well be simple burglary. A leak of some inconsequential information does not necessarily mean DPF’s office has a ‘spy’ in it. Take a few deep breaths. It’s starting to sound like you think the left might be up to ‘Dirty Tricks’ as well!

Quote – “A prominent CNN commentator, the top two political reporters for The Huffington Post, a Reuters reporter, the editor of The Nation magazine, a producer for Al Jazeera America television, a U.S. News & World Report columnist, and approximately two dozen Huffington Post contributors are among the more than 1,000 members of Gamechanger Salon. ”

“Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group.”

The ethics of this political campaign are completely in the toilet now. Hager as published a book based on what is pretty clearly stolen emails from amongst others Cameron Slater and DPF. Cameron Slater was trolling around in the private information of the labour party that they incompetently didn’t secure properly. His justification that it is publicly available is a bit thin however as he knew full well that it was private information and I liken it in an ethical sense to leaving my house unlocked and someone coming in and taking my personal property or information then claiming it was publicly available. Before you all go off that the legal position is not the same I am not arguing that, all I am stating is that what Slater did was not even close to ethical and simply politically grubby so he is now caught in the public eye as perhaps protesting too much.

The labour party however are pathetically incompetent in not being able to even put in the most rudimentary security or encryption even with their supporters credit card details FFS..

Whilst Cameron Slater can be accused of being less than ethical here Hagar looks to have ventured into more murky territory and has perhaps crossed the line from unethical to illegal and it will be interesting to see whether that is the case when Slater makes his threatened complaints to the NZ Police.

The sad thing about all of this is that it is stealing the political agenda for the elections away from manifestos and policies into the sleezy shit we are seeing now. Comically for Hagar this is likely to backfire badly. What we have seen to date is primarily a fight between National and Hagar with Dotcom lurking in the fringes and Labour and the Greens being largely anonymous in the script when they desperately need some media attention. Old story in politics any publicity is good and the only ones getting any in this saga seem to be National

is Mark Mitchell the sort of guy you would target if you wanted to steal information that might be embarrassing to National?
I don’t know – maybe he is…
Maybe David can tell that this is particularly suspicious and labour would have reason to think that he had something particularly juicy.

Totally disagree. New Zealand is getting exactly what New Zealand deserves. Collectively, NZ has a retard-level political interest in the real issues. NZ loves to focus on triviality and distractions. New Zealanders dine out on it. Serves NZ right, that people capitalise on this mass-stupidity.

Like every other country always does, New Zealand will get the government she deserves.

what are the motives for political hacking and break-ins by the far Left. There are only two , political or profit. I suspect it is two pronged. Those with political motive are probably paying people to hack and burgle for them. Who has the money and the motive to use access to the internet to try to bring down John Key by fair means or foul. Who wants to start a revolution? Who wants a get out of jail free card. Hager correctly states that KDC did not supply him the illegally obtained files. But did he pay the hacker to supply Hager? This could get very messy when details emerge. I see Labour starting to back off. They probably fear that the (you can’t possibly disclose that) story emerges before the election instead of after.

(not @ anyone in particular) It’s Hager H_A_G_E_R, not Hagar. The fifth letter is ‘E”. Has any other name in politics ever been so often misspelt? Pay attention. Peoples’ comments lose all cred, when you can’t even get this fundamental right.

Mark (11:36), your point is that Cameron Slater was just as unethical by reading and copying the Labour Party public website as Hagar is – who used and published known illegally obtained data from another “source.” Can you please tell us any of the detail that was in the data that Cameron Slater downloaded from a public website… no you can’t because NONE OF IT WAS PUBLISHED. I think the persons that are being unethical includes you, because you conveniently ignore the fact that sometimes people do come across data that does not rightfully belong to them, but it is what you do with it that determines your ethics.

I did a bit of a straw poll on this at a social gathering out here in the rural sector…no-one gives a flying fuck…As some journo said yesterday, the only people Hager’s “revelations” are going to mean anything to are the 5000 odd who live, or at least work, “inside the Beltway” …

Phil Goff’s talking about this being “equivalent to Watergate”…what utter hyperbolic nonsense…the only physical breaking in seems to have been a Nat MP’s office, and the only thing that could remotely be described as “hacking” by the Nats was walking in through an open (cyber) door into their unsecured website and reading stuff. I am trying hard to find the criminality in that. Walking past a window at Socialist HQ and reading the stuff on the blackboard through an un-curtained window perhaps? Nick K will know better than me whether his former employers could have crafted a charge out of that.

As for blackmail, during my time someone within threatened to make public the most outrageous accusations against one of our MP’s. They were so outrageous that Hide and I pissed ourselves laughing about them. The response was “make our day”. My memory is a little vague now, but there were some hints dropped on blogs, including Whaleoil I think. The MSM wouldn’t touch the allegations with a pole because if they had they would have instantly been sued.

Geddis: With that calibre of writing it’s no big surprise that you like to disguise your identity…when you are “over here” at least…

Mark
You need to watch Slater’s You Tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnOAeVaU5xM on his visit to Labour’s website that he did back in 2011 when its lack of security was discovered. His angle then was for sure political: if Labour can’t be trusted to safeguard your credit card information, why would you let them run the country. For the MSM to run with Hager’s contention that Cameron ‘hacked’ Labour’s website is disingenuous and journalism that is at best laziness and at worst hackery.

Those panning Cameron need to remember that he has ALL the emails including many from leakers from all over the left. I would’ve thought of all the people in New Zealand politics for Nicky Hager to pick a dirty fight with, that Cameron Slater would be the last. When the dust settles, we’re going to find Kim Dotcom will be behind most of this skullduggery and the good thing is that mainstream kiwis actually get it as we saw from the Colmar Brunton/One News poll taken specifically to gauge opinion after the breathless media reporting of Hagar’s spin. I’m guessing Cam will now find a way to bust open who Cunliffe’s remaining undisclosed secret donor is AND worse on KDC.

@Kiwi I A 12.50
Good Point on on leakers emails.Was thinking the person from Dom-Post Andrea Vance ,havn’t heard a peep,from her.Maybe the hacking of the personal emails,is too close to the News of the World phone hacking scandal,where she once worked.Or maybe afraid to comment on Hagers crooked actions,hmmmmm.

Those panning Cameron need to remember that he has ALL the emails including many from leakers from all over the left.

Which would explain the very cautious response by Labour so far. I bet they haven’t had a lot of sleep since Hagar’s book came out, especially Cun’liffe if certain rumours are true. On the other hand National know that the emails have been cherry picked to paint them in the worst possible light and apart from a 2011 story of Labour not properly configuring a web server there’s nothing.

Wiseowl: You are not PROFESSOR Andrew Geddis are you? That’s the kind of puerile comment he is wont to post from time to time…still, living in that cold grey southern shit-hole I guess you have to liven up your life somehow…

It’s not necessarily left wing politicians responsible. Might be a grievance against former police though it is a while back since Mark was in the police. Or perhaps a two-birds inside checking up on him and false flag.

Inky: Clark got an axe through hers…IIRC it was the leftie Tim Selwyn who later got done for sedition…always seemed a bit harsh to me. Something his mate “Bomber” never mentions is Selwyn also faced the court for obtaining a false passport. Unfortunately he – unlike me – had used his for some nefarious purpose, so ended up doing some porridge for it….again IIRC.

If WheelOil had the ability to predict the future he wouldn’t be returning from Tel Aviv to New Zealand in these circumstances.

Instead of “could be”, “might”, “it is thought that” or a 30 minute John Campbell time line journey, the news that will break later will reveal hard evidence conclusively proving who is behind the orchestrated hacking of computers and taking private data illegally that led to the production of Hager’s Dirty Politics book.

Hang on a minute, didn’t he accuse them of stealing the emails? Why has WheelOil changed his tune?

Dexter (275 comments) says:
August 17th, 2014 at 3:30 pm
The only positive to come out of this is that at least Slater has been exposed as being nothing more than a propaganda mouth piece for whatever big business or political interest is behind the scenes.

Link? I missed this exposure. It should be pretty simple to point to it. It can’t be the emails, or the book, as the former can’t be produced and the latter was one person’s interpretation of the emails we do not have. Where is it?

Mark (11:36), your point is that Cameron Slater was just as unethical by reading and copying the Labour Party public website as Hagar is – who used and published known illegally obtained data from another “source.” Can you please tell us any of the detail that was in the data that Cameron Slater downloaded from a public website… no you can’t because NONE OF IT WAS PUBLISHED. I think the persons that are being unethical includes you, because you conveniently ignore the fact that sometimes people do come across data that does not rightfully belong to them, but it is what you do with it that determines your ethics.

Marcw – Interesting response and if questioning Slaters ethics on this makes me unethical in your eyes so be it, you are entitled to your view. I don’t think detailing the Slater position is necessary as he has already freely admitted using the information for his own ends and to embarrass the Labour party, he even placed a video on line showing us how he accessed it and lets not trifle with semantics here, Slater did not simply come across the information he actively searched for it using an IP address search site and knowledge of the internet to go fishing. Lets not try to pretend he stumbled across a file that was metaphorically lying in the middle of a footpath.

Nor am I suggesting Hagar and Slater are on the same level ethically here as I have suggested it appears Hagar is using illegally obtained emails which puts it on another level to Slater, but what I am suggesting is Slater is by no pure as the driven snow in this.

But more important than either Slater or Hagar is the fact that examination of policies and fitness to govern is now secondary to the utter crap this is all about.

Yoza (1,620 comments) says:
August 17th, 2014 at 12:03 pm
Policy?! The Key regime is appearing more and more as a big business PR campaign than a competent government, an idea reinforced by Nicky Hager’s book.

What you think, or want people to think, is not how something appears. It’s how you think it appears. When you put that across as being how it appears in general, then you’re a liar. Are you are liar?

Do you really believe that Hager’s book is undeniable solidly reliable in a court of law, provable truth? No, I don’t think you’ll come out and say that, but you’ll pretend it’s solid information in your misrepresentations.

mikenmild (11,114 comments) says:
August 17th, 2014 at 3:52 pm
‘the latter was one person’s interpretation of the emails we do not have’
Quoting the emails in the book not enough, you think?

Would you put your savings or house on the emails being unmodified by the hacker, and not misinterpreted by Hager? Or even taken out of context? No, I don’t think you would. Yet, you put them out there as being undeniable. But I doubt you are willing to back that up, by putting something on the line.

If someone hacked into your emails, and used them as they wished interpreting them any way they wished, portraying you how it suited, you’d be okay with that misrepresentation? Or the possibility of them doing that?

Somehow I don’t think so. This book and the emails are fruit of the poison tree. Their provenance is tainted, and so any inference they are given unaltered to Hager, or interpreted honestly/presented without political bias, is not possible. Not unless you’re the hacker, and you know it for sure. You’re not the hacker are you?

KIA I can think of a long list of reasons of why this country cannot afford to have a Labour / Greens coalition government but Slater’s contention that if labour cant run a secure website they are unfit to run the country is a little weak. They will have the same civil servants advising them on internet security as national has now and one would hope that they will provide a little better advice than Labour had at the time Slater was into their website. I did watch the Video by the way, very instructive for those of us a little less skillful on the internet.

As to Hagar don’t misunderstand me, I am hoping he gets prosecuted for using stolen information here. Awful individual. I also think Labour are currently cursing him as they remain anonymous in this election as National and Hagar’s fight takes over from the sniping between Internet/Mana and Nationals potshots. The common denominator is National is sitting on the front pages and I’m betting half the population couldn’t tell you Cunliffes first name.

Mark: I don’t wish to be rude, but you clearly have little understanding of “who does what” in Wellington…Any civil servant who advised a party on the security of – or anything else regarding – that party’s website would be swiftly looking for another job…and it wouldn’t be anywhere in the public service…

But the end of your post is brilliant…”…half the population couldn’t tell you Cunliffe’s first name” Mind you, sadly that same half of the population also probably thinks the PM’s name is John KeyS…remarkable how after six years in the job you still here him called that…

thor42 4.29pm. If I was the fairy godmother I would grant you your 3 wishes….but !!!!!

I cracked up about your number 3 wish. Many years ago I was a cop in a rural town that had an open dump with heaps of rats. We used to practice shooting them with 38s / shotguns on night shift. I remember one thin faced little fuck that sat on an old fish crate twitching his whiskers at me. I blinded him with my torch and blew his head off. He was a dead ringer for your weasel faced mate…

Lardball slaters computer hacked??? as if,but if a thought Les Brown Mayor one of thousands who hates the fat shit, hes got the money and the resources to screw slater and remember his site crash,that was a laugh could it happen again national dislike him as one would,has he got something Key/national wants like “pictures” of judith amd slater

I haven’t actually read the book. But since Hager has been threatening to release the actual emails for a few days (although suspiciously has kept making excuses why he hasn’t been able to) I’m assuming he only quotes small segments of them – a few sentences to a paragraph at a time, yes? Between which he paints his own version of events with generous helpings of speculation and spin?

Judith Collins’ husband David Wong-Tung’s office was burgled and his laptop accessed, in what the Justice Minister says was “a series of interesting little break-ins” including the burglary of her caucus colleague Mark Mitchell’s offices.

This afternoon, following reports of break-ins at Mr Mitchell’s Parliamentary and electorate offices almost a year ago, Ms Collins told the Herald her husband’s office had been burgled six weeks ago.

That really is an awesomely disingenuous post, David, You’ve manage to completely exclude the information that Mitchell was burgled *last year*.

And frankly, as someone who has read the Lusk chapter of Hager’s book, which covers the dirty tricks committed in Mitchell’s selection contest, I would think it more likely Mitchell has been hit by one of his own. I mean, seriously, why would anyone outside the party bother with a no-name like him?

Now let me think it was a big brother big money attitude of France that didnt like the way Greenpeace were protesting so we will give them a lesson or two!!

Some very excellent policing and detective work from the NZ Police finally exposed the whole business.

Perhaps it is time for some more good old policing work – possibly forensic investigators more than explosive investigators but it might be time for some digital fingerprinting as well as old fashioned fingerprinting.

“infiltrator” “a National Party staff member was responsible for exploiting a security vulnerability to access confidential donor and member information from Labour’s databases in 2011.”

Patrice obviously has no clue how the web works. “Exploiting a security vulnerability” is completely false. That makes it sound like an attack using a known exploit / buffer overrun etc etc. Rather than just surfing to the site.

If the information was confidential, Labour shouldn’t have published it on their public website.

I see also Cunliffe started referring to in terms of tresspass, by discussing people entering his house because the door is unlocked. That’s a completely unjustifiable simile, and needs to be pushed back on. There was no trespass. No shell or elevated access was gained to the server.

More like, they printed all the information in the herald, and the crime committed was in turning the pages.

[mikenmild (11,114 comments) says:
August 17th, 2014 at 3:52 pm]‘the latter was one person’s interpretation of the emails we do not have’

Quoting the emails in the book not enough, you think?

Would you put your savings or house on the emails being unmodified by the hacker, and not misinterpreted by Hager? Or even taken out of context? No, I don’t think you would. Yet, you put them out there as being undeniable. But I doubt you are willing to back that up, by putting something on the line.

The problem with this line of attack, Ross, is Hager is talking about releasing the raw material so people can judge for themselves. Listening to John Key desperately denying Slater is a National party drone is all the proof anyone needs to confirm the veracity of the material Hager is presenting.

“The problem with this line of attack, Ross, is Hager is talking about releasing the raw material so people can judge forthemselves.”

He is clearly reluctant to do so as it would compromise the carefully constructed narrative he tried to create.

“Listening to John Key desperately denying Slater is a National party drone ”

Key has not said anything which sounds remotely desperate. He has simply confirmed the facts that everyone already knew. That both Cam and DPF are National supporters. Big Whoop.

Almost everyone already new that and could care less.

There are four groups sounding desperate. Kim Dotcom is desperately trying to deny that he was involved, and that this may well have included serious criminal activity, including the burglary of peoples homes.

Hagar is desperately trying to pretend that anyone outside the Left actually cares what he says.

Prentice and the other Labour party attack dogs at the Standard are desperately hoping this does not bring attention to their blatant dishonesty in denying that they are a paid arm of the Labour party which hides Labour activists and MP’s contributions behind pseudonyms.

And Labour are desperately hoping they can smear National and turn around their ongoing dismal poll results.

Key has not said anything which sounds remotely desperate. He has simply confirmed the facts that everyone already knew. That both Cam and DPF are National supporters. Big Whoop.

There is a little bit of a difference between being a supporter and, as Dirty Politics suggests, being an active participant in a cabal that coordinates dirty tricks campaigns against political opponents and people who are considered a threat to the Key regime – the recent coordinated hatchet jobs on Tania Billingsley being the latest contribution to #TeamKey ubber alles.

There are four groups sounding desperate. Kim Dotcom is desperately trying to deny that he was involved, and that this may well have included serious criminal activity, including the burglary of peoples homes.

Completely potty. I don’t think Dotcom has had anything to do with this. He strikes me as the kind of person who couldn’t help shooting his mouth off if he played the most insignificant of roles in this saga.

Hagar is desperately trying to pretend that anyone outside the Left actually cares what he says.

Bollocks. This will be of intense public interest all the way to the election. (well at least enough attention to give it prominent media coverage)

Prentice and the other Labour party attack dogs at the Standard are desperately hoping this does not bring attention to their blatant dishonesty in denying that they are a paid arm of the Labour party which hides Labour activists and MP’s contributions behind pseudonyms.

I don’t know much about the internal machinations over at The Standard, but I seriously doubt it is anywhere near the description your excitable imagination threw up.

Is it possible that these burglaries may in fact not be true and simply another Cameron Slater slight of hand force fed by the media as a distraction? Its plausible after reading only half of Hager’s book.

Its interesting that Judith Collins and Mark Mitchell were the only ones burgled. As we well know of the media who would know what is fact now on a blog.